


No more worlds like this will follow

by heatdeath (aphelion)



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Alyx is in this too, But she doesn't have a major role, Canon Compliant, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Mentions of canon-typical violence, POV Third Person Limited, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29885487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphelion/pseuds/heatdeath
Summary: Barney Calhoun and Gordon Freeman in the moments they're permitted.
Relationships: Barney Calhoun/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	No more worlds like this will follow

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from the title of a song by the artist CORINAGE.
> 
> Takes place during HL2 and HL2:EP1, beginning after the chapter A Red Letter Day.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_"Let’s say you’ve swallowed a bad thing and now it’s got its hands inside you. This is the essence of love and failure."_  
— Richard Siken, You Are Jeff

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Of course, he hadn't expected it when Gordon Freeman arrived at the City 17 train station on yet another otherwise nondescript day. But he had gone over the scenario in his head before, a hundred different ways it could happen. Ever since the Vortigaunts had started telling stories in the human tongue instead of their own incomprehensible language, and the rumor had begun spreading that Freeman's mysterious disappearance didn't mean he was dead—

The confirmation came years later. 

And now he had to carry on like nothing had happened, put on the mask and go back to work. 

Barney was preoccupied. By now he could do border check without a thought, but since he'd slipped back into the ranks all eyes were on him, and his distraction wasn't going unnoticed. It wasn't anything big, just the occasional slip of the tongue, forgetting what code to call in when they pulled someone in for questioning. This was compounded by his realization that he would have much less leeway now; the woman who had been waiting for her husband, when she finally came through, was detained. Normally he would have gotten her out by use of certain back channels, but he couldn't risk putting another gap in surveillance so soon after the commotion with Gordon. 

She disappeared into the building, taken away as though she had never been. Then, he watched another dozen people get packed into the train destined for Nova Prospekt. There was nothing he could do about it.

He couldn't get Gordon out of his mind. He wanted to radio in to Dr. Kleiner and see if he'd heard anything, but he couldn't take the risk. He'd been out of reach for so long, he could bear it a little longer. The difference was, wherever he had been, he'd been safe, apparently. If something happened to him now—

Later, someone came to relieve him of his shift. He stopped on his way out, stepping into a bathroom. Empty, the florescent light above him droning like a bug zapper. He took his mask off and set it on the countertop, then washed his face, catching sight of himself and frowning, trying not to wonder how much different he must look now, two decades later, his hair going grey, the lines beneath his eyes deepened, the bags beneath them bruised like they were placed there by twin thumbprints. The weight of Combine rule, pressing in. He's been undercover a long time.

Gordon hadn't changed at all. He looked exactly the same, in fact. It was uncanny. It gave him a sort of magnetism. He wanted to talk to him. 

-

They met again in the ruins of a crumbling City 17. Heading toward the Citadel, he knew he was running out of time, he just didn't know what for— there was a pressure on his shoulders that hadn't been there the last twenty years. It felt like having to live up to something. Or like someone was expecting an apology, even though the only person who could have been expecting him to apologize was himself. 

All these things he'd had no choice but to do.

In the heart of a gutted building, Barney grabbed Gordon's arm.

"Hey, Gordon—"

Gordon reeled around and almost hit him with the butt of the rifle he was carrying. He looked sheepish as he lowered it.

"Street's clear. We better rest while we got the chance."

Gordon looked at him with a little more scrutiny, and then he nodded, possibly remembering that the fighting had been going on for a week now, and that his good buddy from Black Mesa was only human. 

"...Yeah."

Gingerly, he loosened his fingers from around Gordon's arm and lowered himself to sit in the rubble, wiping soot and sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. At least this time Gordon didn't look any better, the HEV suit pockmarked with the evidence of bullets and crusted with the blood of both the Combine's transhuman army, and the hungry Xen wildlife that had entrenched itself here on Earth. He found himself looking for signs that Gordon might be hurt more than he let on beneath the defense mechanisms of the suit, something Gordon responded to with a raised eyebrow.

Barney felt his cheeks heat. He'd thought he was being subtle. 

"What?"

"Nothin'"

Gordon gave him a look, his lips downturned a little. It made him look too serious. Like a young college professor, which on further thought he could have been, eventually, if he'd been allowed to continue his career. Barney made a dismissive motion with his hand, then turned his head aside, rubbing the back of his neck. 

"I just don't want you dropping dead from something preventable, that's all. When's the last time you actually took a load off?"

Gordon shrugged. It had been a while, no doubt. 

Barney watched him glance either way down the street from their vantage point before reaching to press something on the suit. The robotic voice, somewhat muffled, spoke, "Entering Standby-Mode. Disengaging," before whatever mechanics responsible for the suit's active mechanisms hissed as they powered down. Some inner latch clicked. It took Gordon a moment to wrangle his way out of the top half of the impact-resistant armor and thick, bulletproof padding. And another moment to peel off the layer beneath. The thick mesh was mostly intact, with only the occasional fraying tear— but under that, Gordon's fleshy body was a collage of old and freshly forming bruises. Barney whistled. 

Gordon smiled at him in a way that made his stomach flip.

Then Gordon checked himself over for injuries, twisting left, then right, the muscles rippling beneath his skin. Barney watched. Maybe he should have done the same, but he wasn't wearing the sort of protective clothing that would obfuscate anything serious. Just a vest and some padding. At the same time, he wrestled with the urge to reach out and touch Gordon himself, just to see—

Gordon put the suit back on when he was done. 

"See? Fine."

"Yeah, sure."

He said it like he didn't believe it; Gordon rolled his eyes. Something metallic gave a mournful groan in the distance, but not loud enough to pull him from the moment. The smell of creosote and ash was almost familiar. It was familiar. Sometimes, back at Black Mesa, they'd go down to the parking lot to smoke. Gordon didn't. Barney had picked up the habit in college, liked the scent of the tabacco and the way the smoke warmed him as it pulled down into his lungs. Being forced to quit was the only silver lining he could find in the Combine occupation, but sometimes he still missed having something to roll between his fingers. 

The last pack he smoked had been just outside the New Mexican border. He'd stolen them from a gas station, deserted, the occupants dead. 

It was hard to remember much outside of the immediacy of Black Mesa. Even the Seven Hour War was a bright blur of impossible violence. Nobody really knew what had happened until long after it was already over.

Gordon hadn't missed much. Really.

"What's wrong?"

"Huh?"

"You're staring."

Barney looked away, rubbing the back of his neck again, and Gordon gave a laugh. 

"Do I look that bad?"

"No, it's not that. It's just—" Barney stopped and swallowed, throat gone dry from the dust in the air, "It's real weird. You bein' back, an' all. I thought it'd be different."

Gordon nodded like he knew what he meant.

A silence mounted, creeping past the dilapidated walls of the building they were crouched in, and Barney dropped his hand to his side. They couldn't spend too much longer here. Alyx and Eli were waiting on them. With that knowledge, he could've passed the rest of the time in this pocket of quiet, and he probably could've gotten away without it being too awkward, either. But he knew he wouldn't be able to follow Gordon into the Citadel when there was no one else to act as field commander for the remaining members of the resistance.

His voice came out a little quieter than before.

"I thought you were dead."

And Gordon didn't seem particularly surprised by the revelation, probably because it wasn't one. Barney wondered when he'd had the time to consider it it, about what other people had done while he was away, what they thought about his long absence, wherever he had gone? In some strange way, he felt bad that Gordon had missed it. But maybe it was only strange because that feeling of longing permeated everything now. 

"Look, I—"

Barney pulled himself to his feet suddenly, his hands on his hips, stopped, pressed his lips together, and sat again. Both of Gordon's eyebrows raised as he watched him.

"Come on, what is it?"

Barney rubbed his face, his lip curling as his grimy glove smeared grease and soot across his nosebridge. He wiped again with his sleeve, although it wasn't much better. He didn't look any more or less a mess than he had a moment ago. Gordon smiled a little.

"The last time I saw you, a couple of military men were dragging you off. They were talkin' about disposing of the body."

Gordon smiled a little less.

"Oh."

"Yeah. How'd you get away?"

"I climbed. Out of the trash compactor, I mean."

And then, everything that happened after. But Barney had already long since left Black Mesa when it happened. While Gordon struggled his way through an alien landscape, he was smoking a cigarette on the border line. 

Barney stared at the shattered concrete floor. He picked up a bit of rubble and tossed it away with a clatter, aware of Gordon's eyes on him. He spoke after a moment, glancing up through his eyelashes.

"You know what's really impressive? That you haven't broken your glasses yet."

"That's what impresses you?"

Gordon lifted them from his face to inspect them; they were smeared and dirty, but fully intact despite the small hairline scratches. 

Barney held his hand out. Gordon handed them over after a pause. 

He used the inside lining of his uniform jacket to wipe the lenses, carefully thumbing away the smudges with small, measured circular motions. He held them up in front of his own eyes to check the quality of his cleaning job before before handing them back.

"There you are."

"Thanks."

Gordon slid the frames back onto his face. They weren't that much cleaner, but it was still better than before. 

Silence slunk around the room again. The hairs on the back of his wrists and neck prickled. It was like he could hear the click of a clock, counting down, the hands' _tick, tick, tick_ leaving him jumpy, even though it was only in his own head. If he wanted to say something, he had to say it now. Maybe because he had waited so long it felt unrealistic, the kind of thing you only did in daydreams. But it wasn't all that grandiose. It was only hard to say because it wasn't just an apology, it was an admission of failure. His shoulders squared, he pushed the words out past his lips.

"Gordon, look, I'm sorry. For leavin' you there like that. I should've gone back."

"You couldn't have done anything, Barney."

"I could've went with you."

It came out with more emphasis than he had meant it to, and he jerked his head to the side, looking away, his cheeks warming with the twinge of self-consciousness that flooded in after.

Gordon looked as sorry as he felt, which only made it sting worse. He couldn't change what he'd done. 

There were here, now, and there was no way to make it different.

Silence settled in around them until the distant, guttural roar of a strider echoed over the buildings of their street. Gordon stood at the same time as he did, both of them gathering their armaments up to return to the war. 

Gordon found his way into the Citadel, and they parted ways again.

-

They met for the third time as Gordon and Alyx were making their way out of the city, same as him. They wouldn't be able to go together. Gordon and Alyx would have to draw the Combine forces' fire if the refugees were to make it out of the city. But they stopped in the building Barney had been camping out in for a breather. Gordon was flagging, but he wasn't sure Alyx noticed. The adrenaline was still carrying her through the conflict, and she was younger than both of them.

Although he wasn't really sure how old Gordon was anymore. 

They didn't really talk. They were too busy catching their breaths. Outside, the rattle of gunfire reminded them that the fight hadn't ended, although not one of them needed to be reminded. 

Barney cleaned his pistol for something to do with his hands, and Alyx laughed at him for fidgeting. 

"Nervous, Barney?"

"I'm just being careful."

They'd have to go in a minute. He shored himself up.

"Gordon, about what I said before—"

He realized only as he spoke the words that he didn't know what he actually wanted to say. Gordon was waiting— Alyx was, too, obviously curious. He looked away from Gordon's eyes, bright green where they caught the evening light behind the lenses of his glasses. 

Time stretched on, too long, again.

"Forget it. You guys have get going. There's no time."

"Barney... If you need a moment, you can just tell me."

"Don't worry about it, Alyx. I'll meet up with you guys later."

Gordon didn't say anything. Barney ribbed him about Alyx before he left, once she was out of earshot. (She liked him. It'd be good for them, if it actually went anywhere. It was a good thing.)

-

It wasn't that much later that they met at the train station. There was no space to speak as they shepherded refugees to the station, through lots between the warehouses, past waves of Combine forces. Barney was starting to feel the effects of no sleep. The uprising had begun when Nova Prospekt was destroyed by Gordon and Alyx's flight from the facility, an event that had occurred a little over a week ago now. And Barney had been on the main stage of that battleground since then. If he had been any other soldier in the ranks he could've set aside a few hours to rest, but there were too many people relying on him now.

Much like the outcome of Nova Prospekt, Gordon Freeman's intervention at the Citadel would end in its destruction. When the now unstable dark fusion reactor core melted down, it would take the city with it. They were lucky the thing had lasted this long. 

But it wouldn't last much longer.

The only breathing room was between runs, in small and claustrophobic spaces, between window frames and against doorjambs. 

The last frantic flight from building to building had seen Barney grabbing a live grenade just seconds from detonating and pitching it back at the Combine soldier who'd thrown it, with no other choice because he'd been cornered behind a derelict truck— it was the kind of crazy shit that Gordon did all the time, but he didn't have protective armor or a Gravity Gun to put space between himself and the ensuing blast should he mistime it. The surge of adrenaline left him dizzy and panting, and after climbing the stairs back into the warehouse, he had to take a moment to recover. Alyx was on the train platform with the refugees, and they were between waves, so he had at least that— just a minute. 

Gordon's hand descended on his shoulder from behind, and he whipped around so fast that the HEV suit's armor made a dull ringing noise when his elbow hit against it. Barney winced, grimacing with embarrassment. It was fine, though. He was pretty sure that Gordon couldn't feel it.

"Sorry, Gordon."

"That's all right."

There was an awkward pause, in which neither of them said anything. Gordon took his hand from his shoulder. Barney spoke.

"Uh, hey, what's up?"

"You wanted to say something. Before, on the rooftop?"

It was funny the way his heart sank. He should have leapt at the opportunity, but it said something, didn't it, that his gut reaction was this? Was it because he kept missing the right moment for the words he wanted to say to make sense? Or was it that he didn't actually want to tell him anything in the first place?

It was so far past the point where things could have stayed the same, it was ridiculous to think on those terms, but some part of him was still living in that past, in the what-if, in the what-could-have-been. The lives that they might have had if they'd been allowed to carry on as they always had, their careers, their dreams in-so-much as they had them, with all the mundanity of day-to-day life slotted between. Now there was no space, no room for them to breathe, and they could only take calculated actions with the greater good in mind. Or maybe that was only how he thought because of the circumstances he had put himself in, but it was true just the same; his elbow room had grown considerably larger with the dissolution of the Overwatch in City 17, but leading the resistance forces was just a different manner of self-confinement. His choices were restricted because of it. And so were his words, apparently. 

But he wasn't a coward. Or he didn't want to think of himself as a coward. He'd push himself just to prove that he wasn't. (And if that was why he'd volunteered for Civil Protection in the first place, well.)

Barney placed his hands on his hips, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"I knew you were alive when they took you— the HECU. I knew and I still left. _That's_ what I was apologizin' for."

"Barney, you know you still wouldn't have been able to do anything. You had no idea where they were taking me." It was hard to say whether or not Gordon was surprised, but he had never been easy to read.

"That's really not the point."

"What is the point, then?"

And that was the trouble. He didn't know. 

Did he want Gordon to blame him? Would that make him feel better?

He leaned back against the wall, brow wrinkled beneath his messy bangs, looking frustrated. He got the feeling that despite his continued insistence on this topic, it wasn't really what he wanted to talk about. Like he was using it as an outlet to express something else, something even harder for him to put into words. As though, maybe, if he pushed hard enough, whatever it was, wherever this tension was coming from, it would break with enough pressure applied, no matter where that pressure was coming from. Like a stray spark lighting up a powder keg. But although he was no coward, he wasn't brave enough to say it out loud. To say, _Look, I couldn't stop thinking about it all this time, I had to say something,_ or _I couldn't stop thinking about what happened to you, I couldn't stop thinking about you_ —

"Come on. I'm just glad you got out of there," Gordon cut him off, "If you'd died in Black Mesa, you wouldn't be here now, you know. And then where would we be?"

"You'd get on all right without me." Barney said it like it was a joke, grateful enough for the distraction, but then caught himself wondering: Was it, really? He hadn't done anything that couldn't have been done by someone else. He'd just been in the right place at the right time. Escaping Black Mesa, catching Gordon at the train station, leading the rebellion, it was all only luck that he'd been in the position to do these things. But there were other people who could've done the same. Unlike Doctor Kleiner and Eli, he didn't have the knowhow to make himself irreplaceable. And Alyx had learned enough from them to help carry on their work, which was something he couldn't claim for himself.

Not that he hadn't done plenty of good for them— but that was also besides the point. 

Gordon's expression shifted, and Barney couldn't tell if he was upset on his behalf or just frustrated that he was being obtuse. It seemed like he was going to say something, and then the silence got caught on the sharp edge of the moment and it stretched. It didn't break until Alyx's voice rang across the courtyard.

"Guys, come on! We gotta go!"

Barney smiled and thumped Gordon on the shoulder. He smiled back, looking a little sadder than before, and followed him outside. 

When the last group had been ferried across the courtyard and packed onto the train, there was no time left for long goodbyes. Some part of him had hoped he'd be able to come up with an excuse to leave with Gordon and Alyx, but Alyx was right. They were being followed, he wasn't. 

They'd see each other again soon anyway, or at least that was the hope all people had when they parted— he wondered how Gordon felt about it, and watching him in those last few moments before he boarded the train himself, wished he had the time to ask him. What was he thinking? Did he take it for granted that eventually they'd all be together again? Just like old times? 

Somehow, he didn't think so. He couldn't say why. 

Or maybe he was projecting.

Barney climbed onto the back of the train, keeping his questions to himself. There was a lot he would have liked to talk to Gordon about. What had happened at Black Mesa? Where had he disappeared to for so long? And what did he want to do now? He tried to imagine another, different life, where he had never gone missing, where they had somehow found each other during the disaster and succeeded at whatever it was Gordon had been trying to do without making any compromises. The truth was, they probably would have been separated later anyway. On the other hand, Dr. K had made it into City 17, so why not Gordon too? What would it have been like to have him here, to see him every day, to speak to him whenever he felt like it, to be able to spend time with him that didn't have anything to do with going on the run or making a stand? 

It was hard not to look back at Black Mesa and feel homesick. It wasn't the best job he'd ever had. Really, before Gordon showed up, it'd been pretty boring. The pay was okay, the benefits were pretty nice, and his coworkers ran the gamut from 'friendly' to 'total asshole'. He had been on good terms with enough of them, but none had been especially close. 

But when Gordon arrived, well, they'd hit it off. He'd met Eli and Dr. Kleiner before then, although they'd never talked much, since the two of them were always so busy with their work. But Gordon, being a research associate, didn't have the same kinds of responsibilities they did. Nobody cared too much if he was late every so often, or if he stopped in the halls to talk to the security personnel. 

Barney took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. The train clattered beneath his feet. City 17 was receding into the distance, but the smell of it lingered, bitter where the smoke settled on the back of his tongue. It was only slightly more offensive than the scent of gunpowder that had soaked into his uniform, his skin, his hair. 

Maybe next time. 

It's what he found himself thinking. _Maybe next time, we'll have the chance to talk. Maybe next time..._

But no one could know for sure.


End file.
